Seven songs that changed my life

The songs that I’m talking about here are songs that had some kind of effect on me. Often their effects were not even realized until much later on, as, for example, hearing the Pogues for the first time the summer before I left for college.

And since I’ve had to narrow it down to a reasonable number, there are lots of songs I had to leave out. On a different day, I might have a totally different list (well, except the first one would always be first). I don’t mean to suggest these are the best songs I’ve ever heard or even my favorite songs (though a couple are). It’s just that before I heard these songs I thought about things one way and then afterward something was different.

“Moon Shadow” by Cat Stevens. This is truly the first song I remember, that I was actually aware of, the way that you can be aware of anything at the age of three or four. My stepfather sometimes danced with me to this song, the words of which I found thrilling and scary. I think of this song and I can actually see the record spinning on the turntable, which is the only memory of that early apartment. It is also probably the first memory I have of my Mallomar-loving stepfather, which is exactly right.

“Changes” by David Bowie. I know I’ve talked about this one before but it bears repeating. I was about 11 or 12, in a car with my aunt and uncle, somewhere in Brooklyn. That song came on (possibly the car radio) and I was literally stunned. It occurred to me that up until that moment I didn’t know a thing about music. But that right then I was about to.

“In Quintessence” by Squeeze. If you came of age, as I did, in the early 1980s, your life was probably in some way affected by Squeeze. My sometime friend, who lived in the apartment next door, lent me her cassette of East Side Story and I’m sorry to say that I never returned it. I listened to this particular song about 20 times a day and understood immediately what it meant to be a teenager.

“Tangled Up In Blue” by Bob Dylan. Of course I knew who Bob Dylan was. My mother had been playing his records my entire life. But it wasn’t until a boy I liked suddenly, on a walk through Central Park, started singing the words to this song that I understood. Soon after this incident, I bought the album Blood on the Tracks (which was ridiculously lacking in my house) and I was never the same again.

“No Action” by Elvis Costello. You could say I was something of an Elvis Costello fan. It wasn’t just that I owned every single album of his or that I could name any song after hearing just a couple notes or that I put at least three, if not four, songs of his on any mixed tape I ever made for anyone. It was that for a good portion of my life I think I listened to him every single day. Amazing as it seems, though, there was a time that I didn’t really know much about him. I started with the album Imperial Bedroom and listened to it over and over, still making up my mind. It wasn’t until I bought This Year’s Model that I was utterly and hopelessly addicted. This is the first song on that album and I think it does the trick. (He’s got the keys to car. They are the keys to the kingdom.)

“Side of the Road” by Lucinda Williams. I’m not sure how much I can say about this one. The lines “I wanna know you’re there but I wanna be alone/If only for a minute or two/I wanna see what it feels like to be without you” haunted me. I thought about them for a long time.

“Hotel Yorba” by The White Stripes. This song would probably end up on a dozen of my song lists, as it has already. Of course, I had always liked The White Stripes, but this song, which I heard for the first time when a friend played it for me on the guitar, felt like the beginning of something for me. It still does, every time I hear it.